The UK Taxi Expenses Review 2017

“We anticipate that a company with an annual taxi expenditure of £500,000 could be facing hidden additional costs of approximately £33,000 relating to expense processing and administration.’’

These were the words of Cabfind’s Commercial Director, Daniel Price following its publication of the inaugural UK Taxi Expenses Review 2017.

A survey of 500 respondents from across the UK has shed light on how businesses manage their taxi requirements.

Understandably, managing taxi expenses is not a simple task and by its very nature, taxi travel is often over shadowed by bigger price tag items such as air travel and accommodation.

But for companies that regularly use taxis for business purposes and do not have a robust policy in place, these hidden costs can be surprising.

In the first instance, our survey showed that 55 percent of businesses did not have a defined taxi policy.

More than half of respondents admitted to rounding up the cost of their taxi journeys by an average of 25 percent when provided with a blank receipt.

Company directors were found to be the biggest group of employees who rounded up blank receipts. And approximately 36 per cent of people said they actually forgot the taxi charge before writing it down.

A total of 76 per cent of respondents said they tip the driver to the average value of 13 percent, and among London based travellers this was even higher.

Three-quarters of respondents said they paid for taxis using cash.

What is clear is that the actual true costs of taxi travel are distorted by gratuities, rounding up, over-claiming and potentially, misuse. This lack of transparency and visibility is often compounded by other factors – most noticeably the amount of time taken to claim expenses.

Our survey revealed that 60 per cent of respondents complete expenses during working hours. It takes an average of 10 minutes to complete an expense form and the average user processes an average of seven receipts a month. This means that a claimant can be losing more than an hour a month of work time due to expense administration.

Meanwhile, 58 per cent of respondents completed expense claims forms within a week, which means that less than half take longer to log their expenses. In busy finance and HR departments this can create bottlenecks of work considering almost a third of those who have their expense claims checked, are under scrutiny from two or more people.

Finally, our survey also revealed that irrespective of cost or duty of care considerations, on average, 53 percent of respondents regularly use the same taxi provider and most use a taxi rank if they are in an unfamiliar location.

Our survey paints a very revealing picture about taxi travel for businesses, from how it is commissioned to how it is paid for and the time taken to handle receipts and the administrative process.

For companies that regularly use taxis for business purposes, it should act as a wake up call to the hidden costs and inefficiencies, which could be resolved with closer consideration and smarter management.